5.2 soj pvp

"We are going to buff Seal of Justice and Seal of Righteousness damage. Neither of these Seals is seeing enough use. Justice was always intended to be a strong PvP Seal, and it just isn't right now. We haven't solidified numbers yet - I'm just sharing our intent." - GC

Seems like they're just buffing dmg, but SOJ is so clumsy atm it needs to be completely reworked. Due the way censure works with judgment, the off target dmg of SOJ needs to be...invented?...for it to be competitive. Not to mention that if they make SOJ the most attractive PVP seal, it will completely obsolete BOG as a talent.

Seems like they're just buffing dmg, but SOJ is so clumsy atm it needs to be completely reworked. Due the way censure works with judgment, the off target dmg of SOJ needs to be...invented?...for it to be competitive. Not to mention that if they make SOJ the most attractive PVP seal, it will completely obsolete BOG as a talent.

Thoughts?

If they're going to buff it, then going back to something like Seal of Command style damage would be better. Burst vs sustained. Would rather have a proc that does 100% weapon damage as Holy damage every 2 - 3 attacks, instead of 16% additional Holy damage to 17% additional.

BOG is great to have with or without SOJ. A ranged slow is very valuable in PvP. Seal of Justice is only good to keep people within range once you get to them, but you have to get to them first. There are some situations where having both is the only way to keep people from running out of range.

It's also worth to note that if Seals could be off the GCD, then it would make it more attractive to switch them around.

I would love to see BoG go away and have a seal talent put in it's place. Call it Seals of Zeal

Seals of Zeal:Passive. The paladin can now have 2 seals active at any time. Seals no longer have their normal effects, and instead interact with each other as follows:
Truth & Righteousness: Your multi-target attacks now spread Censure to all enemies hit.
Truth & Justice: Your melee attacks snare the target for 6 seconds, limiting movement speed to 50%. Your Judgements root the target for 2 seconds. Censure applied at 50% of normal damage.
Truth & Insight: Your Censure causes 25% of its damage as a heal over time effect.
Righteousness and Justice: Your multi-target attacks now snare all enemies hit by 50%.
Righteousness and Insight: Your multi-target attacks now have a 50% chance on hit to proc the SoI heal/mana regen.
Justice & Insight: Attacks from enemies afflicted by your Seal of Justice snare heal you for 5% of the damage dealt.

Obviously numbers are off-the-cuff, but it could solve a lot of the basic melee issues/shortcomings that we lack, provide some decent self healing/pressure relief, and most importantly allow us to have FUN, INTERESTING CHOICES that can and do CHANGE BASED ON THE SITUATION.

Already have the precedent here with rogue poisons and how they are applied.

T&R would give some decent passive cleave to Ret PVE. Prot, maybe would use but I doubt.
T&J would be the go-to PVP seal combo.
T&I would be an amazing tank seal.
R&J would give some great kiting ability to the ret/prot paladin in PVE and PVP.
R&I would be the (modest) return of the original HotR SOI heal prot enjoyed in 5.0.
J&I would be the "ohshitimgettingtrained" seal.

Last edited by Nairobi; 2013-02-07 at 07:23 PM.

Originally Posted by Malthanis

We'll all be appropriately shocked/amazed when Nairobi actually gets an avatar, but until then, let's try to not derail the thread heckling him about it.

Originally Posted by Blizzard Entertainment

If it was that easy don't you think we would have figured that out? (Source)

They would have to buff soj tremendously in order for it to get used. Burden of guilt is the same thing except with a 40 yard range. And the judgement used to apply it hits for 50k + sometimes. Yeah u get the instant dmg from soj but you get that same instant dmg from sot plus a dot that increases your overall dmg even-more and keeps stealthies in sight. With the amount off cc already in the game noone uses fist of justice anywhere except arenas so everyone is rocking burden of guilt most of the time. Which makes this buff redonkulous. And if you arent judging on cd then your doin it wrong so soj is just kinda, pointless.....

They would have to buff soj tremendously in order for it to get used. Burden of guilt is the same thing except with a 40 yard range. And the judgement used to apply it hits for 50k + sometimes. Yeah u get the instant dmg from soj but you get that same instant dmg from sot plus a dot that increases your overall dmg even-more and keeps stealthies in sight. With the amount off cc already in the game noone uses fist of justice anywhere except arenas so everyone is rocking burden of guilt most of the time. Which makes this buff redonkulous. And if you arent judging on cd then your doin it wrong so soj is just kinda, pointless.....

Which is why it basically has to at least compete with Seal of Truth in overall damage against a single target.

Paladin
We finished looking at Seal of Righteousness and Justice. Righteousness we ended up buffing by 50% so it should be a good choice against 4 targets instead of 6.

Justice is much more complicated. It was intended as a PvP seal, but the damage loss is so significant and the snare just not that valuable (which is ironic when you consider Ret's history of not being able to catch things), and Burden of Guilt is there if you really do want to snare. Furthermore, just buffing Justice's damage risks Seal twisting in PvE becoming a thing, where you stack up Censure and then swap to Justice. It could be cool if designed right, but would probably just be annoying. We just don't have much room to buff Justice, and players might still forsake it in PvP.

So, we're going to redesign it and attempt to solve another problem, which is Ret's damage outside of cooldowns (which are quite potent). Justice will now proc (and Judgment will count for the proc) a stacking debuff on the target that increases the damage of your next Templar's Verdict. With 5 stacks, this will be a big hit (but not an insta-gib) and opens up some interesting decisions about how to use Holy Power, such as Inquisition or WoG, if you're trying to hold TV. While Truth + Censure will still do more sustained damage overall, there is a chance Justice will see some situational use in PvE, and we're okay with that. Justice is a Ret-only thing, so it should be a Seal they actually use. It won't snare at all, which I expect some will call a devastating nerf, but again, there's Burden of Guilt if you really need a snare.

So...

No doubt they'll remove the additional damage on each hit with the seal active? So basically...they have just given us a dumbed down version of Taste for blood? So more burst? Exactly what we needed?

A. its not ironic because we have to have already caught the target in order for seal of justice to work at all lol.
B. I would say it depends on how much it increases it and how long it takes to fully stack. A slighlty buffed tv every 20 seconds or so wont do alot for sustained dps.

indeed, it's about time they addressed one of our more glaring weaknesses: damage outside cds.

But at the same time, this is essentially going to be similar to seal damage anyway, just bursty and not sustained. Since the damage will still stack TV's damage during cooldowns, a crit TV during Wings/GoaK could very well be stronger than Warrior TFB was, especially considering our mastery adds even more damage to it. If they wanted to buff Ret sustained in PvP they should have just made Censure snare, probably, and made justice have some sort of other PvP utility. IDK. I just see this as being hard to balance against the current SoJ and will be very punishing in low-rated arenas, leading bitching to get it nerfed.

For instance, in like 1500-1800 arenas, Ret/Rogue will probably kill people in a single smoke bomb if Blizzard isn't careful. While 2k+ can play intelligently and deal with it, I can only see this going bad places if Blizzard isn't careful with the numbers. That being said, if it is a damage nerf, people will be outraged because SoJ is already meh.